


Discovery Mission

by where_am_i_am_here



Series: Games [1]
Category: Zombies Run!
Genre: Fights, Gen, POV Third Person, a biker gang?, creepy people, creepy places, dealing with some angst and emotional trauma, it's a five show actually
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-29
Updated: 2018-11-18
Packaged: 2019-08-09 05:49:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16444055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/where_am_i_am_here/pseuds/where_am_i_am_here
Summary: Given that scouting new locations is always a challenge, this one seems too much of a breeze. But maybe Five isn't as alone in this little town as she thinks.---Set post mid-season 4, specifically right before my other ZR fic 'Rescue Mission'.





	1. All clear.

Five sat down on the dusty ground, legs crossed, and pulled her backpack into her lap. The sun was high up in the sky, almost directly above her, bright and warming the back of her neck as she took her first sandwich – eggs and lettuce – out of the bright blue lunchbox. A breeze passed by her, softly stroking over her arms.

The area was surprisingly safe. There weren’t a lot of zombies, and the few she came across were slow. Even now that she was so close to her mission’s destination, namely the little town of Watgrove, no undead had come out to greet her yet. Maybe they were waiting for her to properly enter.

From her spot on the gravel path that had led her through between two neighboring wheat fields, she could easily observe the large, white house she had focused on for her last half hour of running. It was average looking, sort of cliché, actually: a red roof, a driveway leading to a garage, an overgrown garden containing a rusty slide and a dirty sandbox. The door to the house stood open and swayed whenever a gust of wind sped inside. The mat in front of it was half overturned and Five felt an instinctive urge to go and straighten it back up.

There was no blood. Nowhere.

For a second she expected the owners to come rush in the driveway, in a big, fancy car – Five had no idea what kind it could be though, never having learned driving to begin with – and they would unload their groceries from the trunk, four massive plastic bags filled with all kinds of delicious foods, and their kids – two, or three of them – would run out of the house, already begging for a taste of the chocolates their parents surely brought, and the parents would remind them of the promise the children had made, which was to help clean up the garden that had been a bit neglected since their long vacation in Spain.

Five blinked and the driveway was empty again.

Well, it was time to finish up and get going anyway. She took a last bite of her second sandwich, shouldered her bag and dusted off her pants, raising her hand to tap-

A low, stuttering hum made her freeze mid-movement.

It was just a second, maybe shorter, gone just as fast as it had happened. She waited a few more silent moments, but nothing else occurred. Whatever it was, it was gone just as fast as it had appeared. If she had been less cautious, she might have even missed it.

Was it her headset, maybe? Something malfunctioning?

_Sam, comms status?_

No static, no distortion noises when he answered. “Doing fine. All looking and sounding clear.”

Maybe a bit too clear, Five wondered. The initially welcomed lack of roaming zombies started to taste sour.

“Why are you asking? Is everything alright?”

A gust of wind broke through the fields, rushing down the path and pressing on her chest. She forced herself to breathe against it.

_… Yes. All clear._

\---

No one came out of the house. Or out of any other house, for that matter. Five went into most of them to look for supplies, and those were also everything she found.

After skimming through the block of family houses that was located at the southern edge of the town, she stuck to the main road, looking into darkened shop windows and some empty alleys. She passed building after building, most of the doors open and swaying in the wind, and she didn’t hear even one distant moan, and didn’t see one grey, sunken face in any of the windows. Somehow not seeing any zombies was… worse. She had gotten used to them, an ambience – and threat – to be expected whenever she stepped outside of Abel’s gates.

But for now, she was only met by the wind rushing in from the wheat fields, her one constant visitor.

Watgrove was quite a way from most larger settlements Five knew about. Many shop shelves were wiped clear of products, especially the ones in that one big brand grocery store, the obvious first stop for any survivor. But a niche tech shop and a hidden office complex still proved to have valuable supplies for Five to scavenge.

Soon after, she reached the town center. It was a basic square, surrounded by a grey town hall with a church just peeking out from behind it, two dusty cafés that almost looked the same and an empty second-hand-shop called ‘Tracy’s Treasures’. But overall nothing was different here from what she had already seen.

No blood. No bodies, neither from the living nor the undead. In fact, not even mice, or crows, or pigeons. Now that she thought about it, Five hadn’t even seen any farm animals, birds, rodents or insects out by the field.

She stopped herself from thinking further. Of course, there were insects out there, she just hadn’t paid attention to them, because she was waiting for zoms to show up. Why would she care to notice some bugs then? All this theorizing, she was just scaring herself now. This place…

Taking a deep breath, Five turned around, letting her gaze wander over the lonely town square, in her mind’s eye seeing how lively it must have been here before, especially at this time of year. She let the wind brush her face and listened to what was real.

An open door smashing against a wall, a hollow echo from the staircase behind it, the metal sign of the second-hand-shop rattling in the wind, a paper rustling as it was blown down the street.

And then a faint low, stuttering hum.

“Uhm, Five? Are you okay? You’ve just been standing there, looking at… nothing? I think? Or _is_ there something, I can’t- ugh, I can’t move this camera.”

Five opened her eyes, scanning the walls and roofs, and quickly found said camera sitting on the corner of one of the cafés to her left. It was aimed right at her.

This time the hum didn’t fade. In fact, it was getting even louder. But where was the source?

 _Don’t you hear that?_ , she signed at the camera.

“Wait a minute... Sorry, no, I don't hear anything. The cam I have here doesn’t pick up sound and maybe it’s not loud enough to get through your mic. What is it?”

_A hum, or buzz, or... droning, maybe. Not human, rather electronic or machine-like, but I can’t tell what it is yet. Don’t you think it’s weird that there aren’t any zombies around?_

“Well…” Sam paused, slightly thrown off by Five changing the topic. “Yes, but I figured it was a good thing. Less danger. Don’t you think so?”

_I don’t trust it. Something’s off._

“You’re right, it really is strange, I... I just haven’t seen anyone around except for you. And I’ve been keeping an eye on the cams you already passed, no one’s been following you. I’m sorry I don’t hear anything though, because that could mean something. Is the sound still there?”

Five hesitated. … _No,_ she answered truthfully.

The coming and going of that sound, she didn’t like what it implied. It was unnerving, no matter whether it was of a physical or mental cause, no matter whether there was something out there or not… Whatever the reason for that annoying buzz was, she truly didn’t want to deal with it, not now, not later, not anytime. She clenched her fist, sinking her fingernails into her palm, willing her heartbeat to slow down. Damn it.

“So, the buzzing is gone. Do you want to keep going?”

There was still enough space in her backpack to make her feel guilty about if she didn’t try to make the best of it.

Five nodded.

“Do you think you _should_ keep going? _Can_ you keep going?” Sam was backtracking, probably rethinking the situation. Maybe he was also wondering about the factuality of the sound, and Five already regretted that she had even mentioned it in the first place. Her state of mind had been enough of a subject at Abel to last for the rest of her life. “I mean, you still have a really long way back and-”

_Sam, where to now?_

He sighed very quietly. “Straight across the square, then a sharp left when you reach the town hall, through the alleyway there and keep on the left side.”

\---

“Alright, Five,” Sam said as Five stepped out of the car workshop and back on the pavement, lifting up her fully packed rucksack in the direction of a camera on the other side of the street. Then she put it on, the bag a reliable weight against her back. Finally, about to head home.

“Looks like you’re all set now… Hey, did you crawl around in there? I can see those oil smears on your face from here.”

She rubbed her hand against her cheek to find black oil sticking to her fingertips. _Do I look like I can repair cars now?_

“Maybe you should start by learning how to drive them.”

Five looked at the camera in playful shock.  _Did you just try to roast me?_

“Yeah, and I'm already taking it back, that was awful.”

 _The worst,_ Five signed, smiling.

“Absolutely. That’s why we should concentrate on things we’re better at. Like… getting you back before the sun sets which is… in four hours… so…”

Then she saw it, out of the corner of her eyes.

“Five? You just froze there, where are you- where are you looking?”

She didn’t answer, face turned away. Her fingernails sinking into her palm, her shoulders hardened, stuck in an unshakeable posture.

“Goddamn, what’s with these static cams, is there… maybe…”

Then she headed straight for it, crossing the street, almost lunging at the corner where the shadow just passed by.

“Where are you going? Five. You should get back the same way you came- Five, listen to me.”

 _Saw something_ , she tapped, stopping at the corner, readying herself to peek around it. Breath in, breath out. She leaned forwards and turned to her right. Stopped. Taken aback, but not taking her eyes off. Ran forwards and came to halt at a dead end.

“I thought there’s no one around?”

She went back and forth and back, hands tracing the brick walls. There was no door leading into a house. No fire escape ladders. Two thrown over trash cans too small to hide a person. The wall in front of her reaching up the second floor, a height no one could jump to from the ground.

“Five, could you- Hey, could you answer me? What’s going on?” Five heard the impatience in Sam’s voice, that bit of confusion and slight panic that still crept up at just the tiniest hint of any sudden change in behavior that could result in Janine being called in, because everyone very much knew what that had led to last time.

 _Yes_.

A sigh. “Yes- yes, what?”

_Alone._

\---

A bit of relief washed over her when she passed by that large house with its driveway and its garden and its hypothetical family again. Almost immediately a weight dropped off her shoulders. She could finally relax her jaw. Even the sun even seemed to shine brighter out here.

Something wasn’t alright in Watgrove. Its quiet atmosphere was still creeping up, cold fingertips causing goosebumps on the back of her neck, grasping for the back of her heels as if it wasn’t ready to let go off her yet. For lack of a better word she would have called it haunted. Then again, maybe that was just Five bringing her emotional baggage in all by herself.

“Huh, that’s- that’s… weird.”

Five sped up. Leaving that town behind her. Not looking back. Not long and she was home and safe in her simple bed, maybe having some tea. She did not want to know what was so weird, she did not want to hear it, it was none of her business.

“Seems like you got out just in time,” Sam continued, oblivious to Five’s silent thoughts. “Cams went down out of nowhere.”

Her steps were pounding in her ears, her breath deep and slightly raspy and irregular, and soon enough a nagging side stitch appeared, and she didn’t slow down. If she could just make it off the gravel path, down to the main road, she would be out of range of whatever this godforsaken town cooked up to hunt her down with.

“Oh, wait, wait, wait, that’s not… Why is… What!?”

She did not like the sound of that.

 _What?_ , she tapped against her own will.

Sam’s first words got drowned out by the wind suddenly picking up and shaking through her, sending some dusty dirt into her eyes, prickling her face. “- lost your GPS tracking but it should be up again in a mi-“

An electric crackle stopped him mid-sentence.

Five tapped the mic frantically now, still running for the end of the path as if it were a final, secret, safe place, as if everything was alright as long as she got there, but even when she reached it, facing the vacant road, the wind blowing through her bones and chilling her blood, no one answered, and there was no safe place.

Instead the hum-buzz, now more of an aggressive muttering growl, returned, in heavily increased volume. Somewhere in the distance it had split up into multiple audio tracks. 

A few seconds later she was surrounded.


	2. Don't keep them waiting

Five, burying fingernails into her palms, turned around.

The stranger had stopped their motorcycle a few meters in front of her. They stayed seated. Instead of wearing a helmet, a plastic mask reminiscent of a cartoon rat covered their face. Nonchalantly they raised their hand to wave at Five.

A few seconds later their companions arrived. Two more bikers came to a halt next to what Five supposed was the leader, another two blocked the road behind herself. They, too, were all wearing masks depicting different animals and they all were armed with multiple weapons.

The path on Five’s left only led back to goddamn Watgrove. She doubted she could ever shake off the bikers in there. To her right, though, a dark-green forest was stretching out. If not for the trees standing so close to each other, maybe the paths covered in overgrowing moss and thick roots and scattered rocks could pose an advantage for her.

A theatrical throat-clearing forced Five’s focus back to the rat-faced biker. “You - lucky stranger - are by the authority of your spontaneous and fateful encounter with me, the mighty King Rat, officially invited to a great ceremonial gathering!” Rat declared with a possibly deeper voice than his usual. He even bowed his head a little. Not very kingly to bow to someone else, Five thought.

“Do you… accept this honor?”

_What honor? What is this about?_ , she signed.

Rat’s shoulders sank with his act. “I have no idea what _that,_ ” he motioned towards her, “means. Can’t you just, like, nod or shake your head or something?”

Five did neither as she turned on her heels and sprinted into the forest.

“Hey!” Five heard Rat shout from behind, followed by a bike speeding up and one, two shots fired.

More overlapping voices rose up but fainted quickly as Five submerged into the woods. Step by step, forward, away, jumping over tiny tricky pits in the ground, brushing by bushes and ducking under low branches, she melted into the scenery. The growling engines stayed outside. The paths were hard to make out, probably because few people had walked them in the past years. There were no signs that they had ever been marked at all. It would make orienting herself hard, when she was far enough to want to find a way out again. Soon she was surrounded by dark greens both in sight and smell and the sounds of her own deep breathing and of pebbles and sticks rolling beneath her feet.

Five slowed down and allowed herself a moment to gather her thoughts.

She didn’t know where she was headed, but it probably wasn’t back to Abel. She didn’t know what time it was, but it probably wasn’t long before she had to prepare for sunset. She didn’t know who these people were, but it probably wasn’t advisable to stay and find out.

Too much probability and too little certainty for her taste.

She flinched and stopped abruptly at a movement in the corner of her eye, and as she wanted to step backwards her ankle got caught on a root, stealing her balance, sending her landing on her back and her rucksack which softened the fall. Only as her hands slipped through the mud and as she was trying to prop herself up, she took clear sight of the zombie advancing towards her – it was barely more than a grey mass, with its shape and the few pieces of cloth covering it vaguely hinting at it being a human long ago. It bowed forward and flailed weakly with its one-and-a-half arms in direction of Five’s calf, but she quickly rolled to the side and jumped up. She fumbled for the bat attached to her bag, but it wasn’t there – a quick glance at the spot where she had tripped and she saw it rolling off the hill and disappearing between the bushes. Okay, okay, she also had an axe, inside her bag, so she tried opening it while always keeping one eye on the zom that had by now forced its torso upwards and began stumbling towards her. She pulled. It stopped. She pulled and tore at the zipper a little stronger, a little faster, to no avail. It didn’t move. It was stuck after allowing a two centimeters wide opening. Five pulled harder once more and suddenly the thing broke off, leaving her with nothing but a piece of plastic between her fingers.

The zom successfully surpassed the thick root Five tripped over.

Fuck it, she thought, shouldering her bag again. Outrunning it was always the first option anyway. She turned around and something exploded in her left ear.

Five stood completely still. Her eyes were glued to the hawk mask in front of her and the brown eyes staring at her from behind it. She didn’t need to turn her head to notice one of Hawk’s arms outstretched and reaching above her own shoulder.

A last moan, a thud and the rustling of leaves as the zom collapsed.

She took a shaky breath.

Her ear hurt.

Hawk shifted their attention as well as their gun away from the crumbled zombie to Five’s head, and tilted their own. They were both about the same height. “I almost fucking shot you, you idiot,” they spit, their raspy voice putting weight to every single word. “Hands up.”

Five did as told. Slowly. Not taking her eyes off theirs.

A long pause lingering in the air.

“You always like that? No ‘Thank you for saving my life’? No gratitude, no nothing? That bastard was _this_ close to chomping on you.” Five didn’t know how to react. “Seriously? Nothing? Never got taught any manners, huh. Ah, whatever.” Hawk waved with their gun. “Come on, go ahead. Don’t keep them waiting.”

\---

“Oh, and so our lost sheep has been led back home again,” Rat dramatically exclaimed when Five and Hawk stepped on the road. The grass was pushed down where someone’s motorcycle had slid off to follow her, but looking at everyone’s machines she couldn’t tell whose it had been. As Hawk and herself arrived, the masks abandoned their talking or drinking or smoking to scatter back to their respective bikes.

“Had to save this dumbass from one of the greys.” Hawk dug the barrel of their gun a little bit deeper into Five’s spine for emphasis. “You really think this one’s gonna be fun, Rat? Seems fucking stupid to me.”

“Honey, we don’t make assumptions upfront, remember? Everyone gets their chance to prove themselves in a controlled environment.”

Hawk commented with a simple grunt and backed off.

A few seconds later all engines roared up as if on cue. Only Rat’s voice rang through.

“Alright! The invitation has ultimately been accepted by our cherished and valuable guest,” – a nod that seemed to hide a wink – “so we may begin with the preparational procedure. Or, as you may know it, the warmup. You’re acquainted with that concept?”

Five stood in place, staring at the rat mask so intensely she hoped she could see through it.

A shot was fired, she jumped involuntarily. Five forced her heart back down her throat.

Where the hell… was she supposed to… She turned her head left.

“Come ooon! Stop wasting our time!” Rat whined as another shot echoed. “RUN!”

The mere word setting off an instinct in her she headed towards the gravel path, passing by a bulky rabbit-faced biker, out onto the road between the wheat fields. Reluctantly Five ran towards Watgrove for the second time this day.

The bikers stayed behind, but they stayed. Sometimes they shot in the air to keep her running when she slowed down or they smashed a window to cut off possible escape routes and lead her back on whatever track they wanted to have her. Five didn’t yet dare to just stop in the middle of the road and see their reaction to that, mostly so they wouldn’t accidentally run her over. They wanted her alive for some ominous ‘ceremony’ at least, even going so far as to send one of their own after her and have them save her from being zombified. But who knew the limits of their patience. No one talked, not even the Rat, and Five would bet he loved to hear himself talk.  

All things considered, she was better off playing obedient for now.

She ran for hours. By the time they left Watgrove – remaining as void of people and zombies as ever – the sun had moved closer to the horizon, its dark orange bleeding into the surrounding sky. Six o’clock, maybe? The sun was on her left, so… she was going further North… She browsed through everything she could remember about the area. Were there any nearby cities? Settlements, rivers… Anything that had happened here? Anyone around she could know? Anything helpful? Five sighed. She had never been here before. She had not studied a lot of maps to begin with. She wasn’t even that good at remembering people.

Suddenly the bikers sped up and – via gun shots – let her know to take a left off the street.

Five could just about keep up the pace, but she was quite literally running on fumes now. Since lunch she never got a chance for another sip of water. At some point her thighs had gone numb and her knees felt suspiciously shaky. But with a bike revving up right behind her falling would be lethal.

They chased her to avoid abandoned highway cars and the zoms smashing their windows to crawl out of them, and to jump over overgrown train tracks, and to ultimately appear on another street that looked a lot like the first, including old zombie remains. Except now there was a giant corn field in front of Five. It was almost cheesy, almost too much of a cliché for her to believe she wasn’t looking at a painting. The warm glow of the light, the corn swaying in the wind, the picturesque shadow of a house, the tall fir trees in the distance and the swallows forming v’s against the sky.

It was only at this point, the sun half-hiding beneath the ground and coloring the horizon pinkish-red, that she noticed the growly stuttering had subsided. She looked over her shoulder.

The road was empty.

She looked over her other shoulder.

Empty…?

She did a full turn until she faced the too-pretty-to-be-true corn field scenery.

They had left.

With a long sigh Five, sliding her bag off her shoulders, let herself sink to her knees, then onto her side, then onto her back, sucking in deep breaths as she stretched her legs away from herself. Finally, finally they were gone. She didn’t need to think about why and how and what was going on – she was alone for now. Alone. She tapped the mic on her headset and, expectedly, was met with silence. Then she let her hand fall to her side. Listening to her heartbeat slowing down and watching the sky above her starting to spin.

Two stars winked back at her.

Stars. Shit. Alone. Right.

She sat up quickly and after a few moments of darkness seeping into her vision she took in the evening sunset once more. Yes, yes, there it was: Right between the spot where the sun dipped and the fir trees, there was a house.


End file.
